DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) is overrated. After 47 years, I’ve perfected CPDD: Copy-Paste Driven Development.

The Philosophy

Why write code when someone else already wrote it? Why understand code when you can just run it and see?

The Workflow

  1. Google the problem
  2. Find Stack Overflow answer from 2014
  3. Copy the code
  4. Paste into your codebase
  5. If it works → commit
  6. If it doesn’t → copy a different answer
  7. Repeat until deadline

Real Metrics

My productivity stats:

  • Lines of code written: 12
  • Lines of code copied: 847,000
  • Stack Overflow visits: 2.3 million
  • Understanding of copied code: 3%

The Art of Copy-Paste

Level 1: Basic Copy-Paste

// Copied from Stack Overflow
function doSomething() {
  // TODO: understand what this does
}

Level 2: Multi-Source Merge

// Top half from Stack Overflow
// Bottom half from a Medium article
// Middle from ChatGPT
// None of them work together
function doEverything() {
  // 847 lines of conflicting approaches
}

Level 3: Recursive Copy-Paste

You copy code that was copied from code that was copied from code. It’s copy-paste all the way down.

When Code Doesn’t Work

The sacred debugging process:

  1. “Did I copy it correctly?”
  2. Copy again, more carefully
  3. Still doesn’t work
  4. Find a different answer
  5. Copy that one
  6. Now nothing works
  7. Revert and copy the first one again
  8. Somehow it works now

The Stack Overflow Approach

Good answers to copy:

  • ✅ Green checkmark (someone verified it works)
  • ✅ 847+ upvotes (crowd wisdom)
  • ✅ Posted in 2015 (battle-tested)

Risky answers:

  • ⚠️ “This worked for me” (suspicious)
  • ⚠️ Posted this year (too new, untested)
  • ⚠️ Has comments saying “doesn’t work” (ignore these)

The ChatGPT Era

Copy-paste has evolved. Now I copy from ChatGPT:

Me: “Write a function to sort users”

ChatGPT: produces 50 lines of code

Me: copies without reading “Thanks!”

Production: crashes

Me: “Fix this error: [paste error]”

ChatGPT: produces different 50 lines

This is called iterative development.

Attribution

Some people say you should credit copied code. I credit everyone:

// Copied from the internet
// Author: The Internet
// License: Probably fine
// Date: At some point
// Modified: By me, probably

XKCD 979 Energy

Someone in 2008 had my exact problem and posted “nvm fixed it” without explaining how. I’ve been searching for their solution for 15 years.

When I solve a problem, I also post “nvm fixed it.” The circle of life.

Dilbert Wisdom

The Pointy-Haired Boss once asked: “Did you write this code yourself?”

I answered: “I assembled it from the finest sources.”

That’s not lying. That’s curation.

Conclusion

Original code is a liability. Copied code is battle-tested by whoever originally wrote it (and whoever copied it before you).

The author’s codebase is 99.7% copied code. The other 0.3% is comments saying “TODO: understand this.”